THE ORDER OF THE BATH.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume VIII, Issue 301, 22 November 1918, Page 3

THE ORDER OF THE BATH.

The officials of the Borough Council are paying visits to our backyards and making discoveries. When our friends visit us we admit them by the front and introduce them to one of the worst rooms in the house viz., the parlour. By “worst,” we mean, as a rule, the room that is least “homey.” It’s just the show place, a sort of shop, not a place to live and enjoy yourself in. In a house there are rooms and rooms, and the jolliest i” the one we call the living room. We live in it, eat in it, smoke in it, and do what we pretty well like without fear of knocking the gilt off. It’s the business room, the room one hardly tires of. It has a rattling old sofa, instead of a chesterfield, what an awfully aristrocratic, humbugging word! And on that sofa you can lie down in your boots if you like. It has chairs that invite you. to lounge and rest in and one can lie back in them and stick your feet up on the mantle-shelf and smoke to. your heart’s content. You can sit in your shirt sleeves in that room and not feel out of place. It’s the finest room in the house, and the next is the bath-room. That is the room of health, the place worth spending money over when you are building a house, the room worth while so fitting up that you feel as if you must strip and tumble into the water, and made so inviting that you would no more think of avoiding it than you would of not calling for a legacy of, say a £l,ooo, that som obliging uncle ha 1 left you. In \ew Zealand the bath-rooms seems to have been a thing of evolution. Originally it appears to have been not. Then it happened to be thought of and built. across the yard. Cold water was laid on and if you fancied a hot bath you put the cooper on or boiled a kerosene t n full of water, and made believe you 1 were having the time of vour life. 1 All this was showing you how not 1 to do it, and gradually those over-the-yard bathrooms became the receptacles for all the house-hold rubbish, and any former glorv they huu departed. A cold, checrle s lath room is one of the most awful piacies in the w'orld. and a co r y. well furnished, well lighted bath-room with hot and cold water, always to your hand is one of the most delightful. Then, again it is a great investment from a health, point cf view. The average individual seems to be strong on patent medicines, the get-well-ouick things that will curte housemaids’ knees, or liver complaint, or bunions. We prefer the bath. When the skin is given its chance by being kept scrupulously clean, it is wonderful how mue medicine you can get along with. Nature has planted thousands of outlets all over your body, and all she : asks is that you will do your best: by washing your skin to give those, outlets a chance to perform their, functions, and she will do her utmost to keep your body, in perfecthealth, and the body in perfect health is the .finest resistant in the world to the inroads o- disease. We spend a lot of monev on adorning our bodies and decorating our homies, and miich of it is both unI beatitiful and burdensome, “is not f the life more than meat and the I body than raiment?” . A sound I mind in a sound body is a . great guiding principle for us all if we : did not know it. Obey the laws of ■ nature and it is wonderful what a i beautiful thing life becomes. The ■ joy of living depends unon a very I few simple things, and most of them ‘ 1 are within reach of us all. however l mod era*.-' our means. It is our i wants that bEcht and curse us, not tour needs. Just now we are up against a big snag called influenza and it is costing a huge sum in i human life, and worry, . and bard ' cash. It is demanding its heaviest, toll wherever dirt reigns. It swept like a tornado through the Native: ! races of .Africa, an ’ where’’ B r there is dirt it fairly rollicks. The wise' ' man does nwe than wash his face and ntd a clean collar on,. ho washes his whole body, every inch, and lines it ns nfn-n as ho can. and then lions along like a boj . : Buck up. burn your rnbb’sh npd use your bath and you will ba’m m-; fluenza moving out cmick and lively and don’t forget to keep cheerful.